How are the Goals of the UN Similar to an Accountant’s?

The Goals of the United Nations and the Accounting Industry

The United Nations’ assembly agenda has 17 sustainable development objectives aimed to be achieved by 2030. You may be wondering “Why is an accounting firm discussing UN goals?” Well, many of the intentions of the UN are also goals within the accounting field.

Goal #8 focuses on economic growth. We wouldn’t be accountants if we didn’t care about the growth of a client’s businesses as well as giving sound financial advice.

Goal #5 is gender equality. The accounting industry is primarily female dominated. But this doesn’t mean the quality of the jobs are equal. For example, an analysis of 673 large companies by Crist | Kolder found that women make up only 12.6% of CFO positions. This percentage has doubled since the last decade. So, the quality of jobs within the accounting industry is slowly becoming equal within the genders

Within the next decade, the accounting field will be on the look-out for new and talented leaders. Talent will be lost in the next few years as Baby-Boomers move towards retirement. As firms search for new talent, Eileen Treanor, the CFO of Lever, claims “competition for talented leaders [will be] fierce, and not seriously considering half the population will leave those companies at a disadvantage.”